The Life You Don't Remember
by AdAbolendam
Summary: May returns from the Framework, just not the way that Daisy and Simmons originally planned. While Coulson has no memory of those missing weeks, May remembers everything. Life goes on for the Agents of SHIELD, but May and Coulson are still haunted by ghosts, past and present.
1. Fear

**Content: The team is back in the real world, but May is still haunted by her life in the Framework. A life that only she can remember.**

* * *

"Come on, May! I've got you covered!"

Melinda May sized up the distance between her and the cargo container that her partner was crouched behind. Phil Coulson laid down a steady barrage of gun fire, giving her a chance to escape. The space between them could not have been more than five meters. But to her, it seemed like the stretch of a football stadium.

She tried to steady her nerves, when another bullet clipped the side of the desk that was her flimsy shield against their attackers.

Just a short sprint across that open space and she would be home-free.

She and Coulson could grab the box and be out the back door.

Three months ago, she would have already cleared the onslaught and probably taken out a few of their assailants as she went. But three months ago she was another person. A person that had not been kidnapped, duplicated, and shoved into a fabricated reality.

The Framework had changed her.

It wasn't her memories.

May knew very well what was real and what was not now.

That was the problem.

"May!" Coulson shouted. He ejected the spent clip from his Beretta and shoved another in its place, pausing only to get her attention. "Let's do this! Come on."

She only got as far as a squat before she froze again. She could not will herself to go any further. She could not move a muscle.

"May?" Coulson asked. He knew something was wrong.

From across the firefight, she caught his eye and shook her head.

"I can't," she whispered.

 **The Framework, Two Months Earlier**

She could feel his eyes on her the entire ride home, but would not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it. It was at times like these that she thanked whatever gods were listening that she was the one with the training in espionage and not her husband. She was well-practiced at hiding her emotions, whereas he was painfully conspicuous.

She would have felt worse about having such an obvious advantage in their relationship, if it were not for the irritating knack that he had for reading her, even when her Resting Bitch Face was fully-engaged.

The glances in her direction did not give up all through dinner.

She was quieter than usual, but he did enough talking for the both of them.

After a while, he grew tired of her non-committal hums and mono-syllabic responses and they lapsed into silence. He would bring it up as soon as she made a move to leave the table. He was painfully predictable that way.

She pushed back her chair and counted down in her head.

 _One… Two…_

"Melinda?"

She sighed.

"No," she responded tersely.

Melinda heard the padding of his socks on tile as he followed her into the kitchen.

"'No,' what?"

She put her plate in the sink and turned to face him.

"No, I don't want to talk about this," she said. "Not again."

"Hey," he placated, putting his hands up. "I wouldn't bring it up. But it's obviously bothering you."

"It's not."

Now it was his turn to give her the silent treatment. Phil Coulson leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, pinning her with a well-practiced stare. The seriousness was marred by the quirk in his lips.

Melinda stifled a groan. It galled her that he knew exactly how to get under her skin. She was glad as hell that he wasn't a spy. With his natural intuition and persuasive skills, he'd make a formidable adversary.

"She was a sweet girl," Melinda conceded. "I liked playing with her. I can't have one of my own."

She listed each fact with an even, detached cadence. The, _"so drop it,"_ at the end went unspoken, but it was implicit.

They had had is conversation enough times that they both had it memorized. Ten minutes of her playing with one of his students' younger siblings was not going to change that. If she had known that the child would have been there, Melinda would not have agreed to go with him to the student-teacher meeting.

But she hadn't known. So while Phil and his student discussed her multiple missing homework assignments and absences from class, Melinda had been put on de facto babysitting duty. She knew when she sat cross-legged on the floor next to the six-year-old, watching her draw, that she was going to be roped into another debate with him. But she had done it anyway.

Sure enough, Phil and his truant protégé exited the office just in time to catch her and the little girl in mid-laughter, bent over a half-drawn picture. Melinda's smile faded as she caught his eye. Pity and longing emanated from beneath the veneer of amused detachment.

Melinda had been silent ever since.

"I wouldn't keep bringing it up if it wasn't something you wanted," Phil said quietly, carefully studying the patterns in the tile at his feet.

"Phil," she sighed. "I want a lot of things. I also want world peace and a condo in Kauai, but we don't have a fight once a month when I don't get one of those."

"I think this is a little more attainable," he retorted.

"You know what I do for a living," she began.

"You can't keep using your job as an excuse."

Melinda ground her teeth.

Of course he could not understand. Phil's work ended when he got into the car and left the school campus. He got to go home at the end of the day and hang everything up. He did not need to worry about midnight calls that would send him out of the country for days at a time. He did not need to fear that he might not make it back when the job was done.

Phil had a general idea of what she did, but he had no concept of the danger she faced. He had no idea of what she had seen.

That was the way she liked it.

She did her job so he never had to have those images in his head.

Pictures of a girl torn apart from the inside after Terrigenesis had made her a human IED. Smells of the charred remains of civilians caught in the crossfire with her agents after an Inhuman with the power to harness electricity had sent a static burst in the direction of their bullets.

Phil only knew about the Inhuman plague from the news. He could not possibly imagine how lethal they were in person.

It was her job to make sure he never knew. But it also meant he could never understand.

"The world is more dangerous than you realize, Phil," she said at last. "The most selfish thing I could do would be to bring a child of my own into this world."

He brought a hand to rest on her arm. The simple gesture was all it took to make the arguments in her head ring hollow.

As married couples went, they were not the most physically affectionate pair outside of the bedroom. They were cautious with each other's space, saving those infrequent touches for the times when they mattered most. Even after ten years, his hand against her skin still felt new. It did something to her that she thought she should have a better handle on after all this time.

Melinda allowed herself to be pulled into his arms. At least this way, she would not be subjected to that probing stare.

"I could spent the rest of my life with just you and be happy, Melinda," Phil said, over the top of her head. "But I don't think this is enough for you."

She jerked away from him.

"You are enough for me," she insisted. "I'm happy with you!"

"I know," he placated. "But I think you could be happier."

May swallowed, but the lump in her throat still burned.

He was killing her.

He might not know what the specifics of her job entailed, but he was perceptive enough to know why she did it.

It was all for him.

She put her life on the line every day to protect him and people like him. So he could be safe.

All he wanted was to do something for her that would make her as happy as she made him. And she would not let him.

"Maybe I am being selfish," she realized.

She did not know that she had spoken out loud until he was answering her.

"Melinda, you are the least selfish person I know," he said. "You never put yourself first. That is the very thing that would make you a great mother."

She stared at his shoulder, unable to reply or look at him.

"Just answer one thing, completely honestly, without thinking of anyone other than yourself for once," he started. "Do you want to have a baby?"

The answer buried in her gut under layers of self-denial was wrenched out of her throat before she could stop it.

"Yes."

Phil nodded and took her face in his hands.

"Then let me give you this," he begged her. "Please."

Melinda could not do anything but nod. Her admission had robbed her of the capacity of speech. When his lips met hers, she pressed her body against him, holding him as tightly as she could.

If she did not allow any space between them, maybe there would be no room for the horrible rush of fear and relief that had taken hold of her.


	2. Simulacrum

**Our World, Present Day**

There was no way Coulson could have heard her whispered reply over the percussive explosions from the Watchdog's semi-automatics, but he must have figured out she was not coming to him. May watched, not moving a fraction, as he activated his shield and crossed the length of the room to her hiding space.

"May!"

His face was inches from hers.

She shuddered like he had woken her from a dream.

"You with me?" He asked.

May must have nodded, because he slung one of her arms around his shoulder and hoisted her to her feet. She allowed herself to be half-led, half-dragged behind him while he cleared the path of the crossfire, unable to shoot back at their assailants as he held her and the shield that protected them.

Her brain was working in slow-motion, trying to process what had just happened.

It was not until they were back on the _Zephyr_ and airborne that shame started to creep in. She left the control room and stumbled into the hallway in a daze.

What the hell had happened to her back there?

She slumped against the cool metal of the corridor wall and all of the air in her lungs left her.

She should have listened to Simmons. She should have never gone into the field. She could have been killed. She could have gotten him killed.

How was she supposed to know that she would have frozen like that? She had taken enemy combatants with twice the firepower of those Watchdogs back in the warehouse and never once had she hesitated.

But things were different now. It wasn't just her she had to worry about anymore. It would have been so much easier if he knew, if he remembered.

"You okay?"

May flinched.

Damn, she was off her game. She had not even heard Coulson approach.

She got to her feet.

"I think so," she lied. An assertive _"yes"_ would have been more than he would have been able to swallow. "I'm sorry… about—

"It's okay," Coulson assured her. "It's understandable. After everything…"

May gave him a quick nod.

"Will you have Simmons look you over when you get back to the base?"

She answered with a soft snort. Simmons would not find anything she did not know already.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" He asked. "You know I'm here if you ever want to talk about—

"Stop," she cut him off. If she could not handle a team of thugs-for-hire inexpertly spraying bullets in her direction, there was not a chance she could handle this. For two months, she had kept it all hidden away: the secrets, the isolation, the pain as he kept his distance from her. It was taking a hard toll and she could not keep pretending it did not hurt.

"May…" He trailed off.

"You're not ready to hear what I have to say," she stated.

Coulson frowned.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you might have been able to hear it from her, but not me."

There.

She had said it.

After almost two months dancing around the elephant in the room, she had given it a name. It wasn't just her burden to bare anymore.

"May, you _are_ her," he insisted.

"I believe that," she agreed. "But I don't think you do."

He opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out.

Good.

At least he respected her enough not to lie.

"That's what I thought," she said.

She kept her posture straight and composed as she turned and left him standing alone in the hallway. May might not have much left, but she refused to lose face in front of him again.

 **The Framework, Seven Weeks Ago**

It was a week after the conversation in the kitchen that they met the girl that would tear apart the entire world they had tried to build for themselves.

At first, Melinda thought she was insane.

She showed up at their door on a Saturday afternoon, wearing a torn denim jacket and a positively manic smile. She introduced herself as "Daisy."

Daisy said she was an agent of SHIELD and that she knew Phil and Melinda. She said they were co-workers, friends, as close as family. She told them this world wasn't real: Hydra, the Chitauri attack that had leveled New York, even her marriage. It was all a virtual reality they were trapped in called "The Framework."

The claims that Daisy was making were crazy enough, not to mention treasonous enough, for Melinda to have called the Containment Team at Hydra and have her taken away for processing.

But Phil wasn't so sure.

That was enough to make her pause.

In that brief moment of uncertainty, something happened. It wasn't a conscious thought or a memory. It was a feeling.

She knew this girl, Daisy. She had met her before.

It was a feeling stronger than déjà vu.

It was like a memory from a dream.

The expression on her face must have given something away.

"You know I'm right," Daisy said. "Don't you, May?"

 _"May."_

No one had called her that in years. So why did it sound so familiar on the girl's lips?

 _"Better do what the man says, Agent May."_

 _"I'm sorry, May."_

 _"May! Oh my God, it's good to see you!"_

 _"May, you have no idea… What I did…I have nothing left."_

"Then why did Andrew save you?" She muttered. Her eyes darted across the room, as if she was reading a book only she could see. She had spoken these words before. Not here. Some place far away. In a plane. She said these words to a girl in a cage on the other side of a window made of bulletproof glass.

"Melinda?" Phil asked.

"You remember," Daisy gasped.

"You did a lot of bad things," Melinda recited. "All you can do now is balance the scales—

"Do some good," Daisy finished with her.

When Melinda looked up, there were tears in the girl's eyes.

"Daisy?"

"Yeah, May," Daisy agreed. "It's me."

The memories from the life she had forgotten assaulted her. She was caught in a riptide, unable to catch her breath. The good times, the bad, the traumatic, all of them broke free at once, burning her consciousness with the bittersweet pain of nostalgia.

It was too much.

When the torrent stopped and the world was still again, there were only two inescapable thoughts left: She was not Melinda Coulson, Agent of Hydra.

And nothing was going to be simple ever again.

She followed Daisy and Phil to the "backdoor" through a graveyard with heavy steps on stiff legs that barely obeyed her commands.

When their memories returned, she and her "husband" could barely look at one another, let alone speak. Their dual lives each fought for dominance in their Framework brains, unable to reconcile one with the other.

Daisy insisted that it would get better once they were back home. May had to believe her. She just knew she could not stay here. Not now that she knew the truth.

They had almost reached the exit, disguised as the grave of Dr. Jemma Simmons, when Daisy's phone rang. May and Phil stood on either side of the girl, listening to the one-sided conversation with blank stares.

"Why not?" Daisy asked the caller. "Are you sure?"

Daisy spared a glance at May and she felt a tug in her gut. Something had gone wrong.

"Is that the only way?... But you're sure it will work?... Okay. We'll be there in ten."

"What's up?" Coulson asked.

Phil was sounding more like "Coulson" now. The complacent school teacher was fading into the background as the confident agent of SHIELD took over.

"There's been a… development," Daisy said, avoiding May's eyes. "We need to meet FitzSimmons and the others at Fitz's lab."

"What kind of development?" May demanded. She had a horrible suspicion it had to do with her.

Daisy bit her lip.

"I think it's better if Fitz explains in person."

* * *

 **Of course getting out of the Framework couldn't go smoothly. More to come!**


	3. Buried

**Our World, Present**

After _Zephyr One_ had returned home and the box that they had stolen from the Watchdogs was safely stowed, Coulson left the base. If anyone had asked him what had brought him here, he would not have been able to answer. He knew he would not find any comfort or solutions in this place. Maybe he just wanted to be near her again.

 _"Which is stupid,"_ he told himself. _"She's not here. She's back home."_

He knew this to be true on a conscious-level, but for some reason his heart was slow to catch on.

He reached his destination and stood without moving a muscle, hands closed into fists.

Fresh grass had only just begun to sprout on the new grave.

 **Melinda Qiaolian May**

 **Friend, Mentor and Hero**

 **1972-2017**

It was not her buried six feet under his feet.

It was just the body that had carried her for all of those years.

Somehow, it did not matter how many times he reminded himself of that, the grim reality of being pulled out of the Framework and seeing her lifeless form beside him was more powerful than logic.

Coulson had no memory of his life in the Framework.

May, Simmons and Daisy were the only ones who really knew everything that had happened there. The others remembered snatches and glimpses. Only Coulson was a blank slate.

Simmons reasoned that it had something to do with what happened when he came back. She said the others could recall bits of their time in the Framework because they had come out of it slowly. His case was more like being awoken from a dream by a fire alarm.

The last thing he remembered before waking up was being dragged into a room aboard a submarine by AIDA, groggy and semi-conscious. He opened his eyes and saw May, the real May, not the LMD that had been masquerading as his partner for those past few weeks. She was drugged and plugged in to Radcliffe's Darkhold-Matrix, but she was alive.

Coulson did not even have a chance to call out to her before he was injected with a syringe. No amount of struggling or will-power could repel the darkness that followed.

Two weeks later, he woke up stiff and groggy.

His neck spasmed when he turned to look at his partner.

May's lips were blue and her complexion was pale.

He did not know how long he performed CPR before Simmons and Daisy burst into the room and pulled him off of her, while Yo-Yo took AIDA apart piece-by-piece, faster than the eye could process. When they explained what had happened, he did not believe them. Even when May entered the room, looking every bit as real as the person he remembered, he could not get his brain to wrap around the reality that he had been thrust into.

As the living May stood next to her deceased counterpart, the colour of her complexion seemed like a mockery of the sallow corpse that was sprawled on the table beside her.

Earlier on the _Zephyr_ , he had told his partner that he truly believed she was Melinda May, but it was no wonder he could not convince her of a truth he did not feel.

If he could just remember, maybe he could really understand.

Coulson sighed.

"I know you're not here, May," he said aloud. "I keep telling myself that, but I don't believe it. Why can't I believe it?"

A soft breeze blew through his hair, but offered no guidance, no solace.

"I know she's not made of metal and code like that LMD. I know she has all of your memories. She has your warmth and wit. Maybe she even has your spirit. I don't know. Was is it Mack says? 'Memory is the author of the soul?'

"I know she cares about the team, about me. Why isn't that enough?"

The laser-cut letters that formed her name in the headstone seemed to taunt him with their silence.

"What would you do in my situation?" He asked. "I know I should probably just ask her. But I'm asking you. If the circumstances were reversed, if I wasn't the one who made it through, what would you have done?"

Nothing.

His only answer was the distant sound of wind whipping through the trees on the edge of the graveyard.

May was not here. She could not give him the peace he sought.

But, maybe there was something else.

Coulson pivoted on his heel and started at a brisk jog to the north side of the cemetery. He had never been to this spot before, but he knew where it should have been.

Lot B, Row… 17? Underneath an oak tree. Perhaps it was morbid of him to remember this information, but once he had read the file, it was permanently locked in his memory.

His breath left him when he saw it.

 **Phillip**

 **Coulson**

 **1970-2012**

Fury had not wasted any money on an epitaph. Coulson supposed there was no point providing an elegy for a man who was not dead.

He sank to his knees.

So this is what it was like.

This is how it felt to stand beside a visible reminder of your own death.

He had friends and co-workers who had said goodbye to him forever that day five years ago. There were others that came to know of his resurrection and did not accept it. People who believed he was different, as if the part of him that made him who he was had perished for good before the Battle of New York. People who had wished he had stayed dead rather than come back in whatever form he was now: Agent Blake, Robert Gonzales, several agents who had chosen the "Real SHIELD" over the leadership of Phil Coulson—the corpse reanimated with alien DNA.

But she was never one of them.

If May had questioned who he really was for even a second, he never knew about it.

She had probably attended his funeral, he realized. He did not know for sure. He had never asked.

How long had she believed he was dead before Fury told her the truth?

She had buried him, grieved for him, and then the moment he had come back, she was there by his side. May had believed he was his old self, even when he had doubted.

 _"I know you, Phil. And I knew you before. You know I'd be the first to go down that road if I thought it led somewhere."_

He remembered those words as clearly as if she had spoken them yesterday.

 _"Do you believe me at least? Do you?"_

"Yes," he answered finally. "I believe you, May."

 **The Framework, Seven Weeks Ago**

Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz engulfed Daisy in a claustrophobic embrace when she, Coulson, and May entered the lab on the top level of Fitz's private company, FitzCorp. Jeffrey Mace and Mack stood back from the group with folded arms, wearing matching expressions of men waiting for the axe to fall.

When FitzSimmons released Daisy, the scientists greeted Coulson and May with tight smiles and nervous glances.

"Everybody alright?" Coulson asked.

Mack rubbed his neck his hand and shook his head.

"'Alright' is relative at this point," he answered.

"These two were just bringing us up to speed," Mace said, indicating FitzSimmons. "It's a lot to take in."

"FitzSimmons," Coulson nodded. "You wanna fill us in?"

May held back a smile. Coulson was using his "director-voice." It was comfortingly familiar.

"Better start with the good news first," Fitz said, sharing a sideways glance with Simmons.

"Well, it's not all good news," Simmons demurred.

"Well, it's better than the other thing—

"Someone start talking," Coulson interrupted.

"Right, well, to begin with, it turns out the Framework isn't just a shared illusion," Fitz said.

"What does that mean?" May asked.

Daisy, Fitz, and Simmons all looked at one another.

"It's another dimension," Simmons deadpanned.

"What?" Coulson demanded.

"It started out as a virtual reality," Daisy explained. "A world that had certain boundaries created by Radcliffe and AIDA. Then, when May was inserted into the Framework, her brain started working with the program and built a larger world. But it was still just like an interactive video game. Because of the data that was needed to construct a world of this size, the Framework was borrowing memory from electronic devices all over the planet."

"Then it stopped," Fitz said.

"What do you mean it stopped?" Coulson asked.

"He means that the Framework has stopped using cell phones and computers in our world, because it doesn't need it anymore. It has become its own self-sustaining alternate dimension," Simmons concluded.

"How is that even possible?" Coulson asked at the same time May said, "What does that mean for us?"

"It's that damn book," Mack interjected.

"The Darkhold," Simmons agreed. "We've already seen its ability to transport the Ghost Rider from whatever dimension it came from into Robbie Reyes and Mack. It showed AIDA how to construct a portal between worlds. Once Radcliffe used it to expand upon the existing Framework, it must have somehow _created_ an entirely new dimension."

"It means that this is all real," Daisy continued. "This world, the people, our bodies… It's the difference between playing a video game, and turning the game off and all of the characters continuing to fight dragons or whatever with no one at the controls."

"So the game has been turned off from our dimension," Coulson realized. "If that's the case, then how do we get back? Simmons's backdoor only works if there is an electronic connection between our world and the Framework."

"Luckily, the Framework isn't entirely self-sufficient yet," Simmons said. "It's only using about 1/100th of the power that it used when we entered, but it's using less by the minute. The window of opportunity to come back is closing."

"Then why are we standing here talking about it?" May asked. "We should be at the backdoor now."

"Because, when we come back, only our consciousness will return to our world," Fitz said. "Not our bodies."

"We know," Coulson replied impatiently. "We return to our bodies that were plugged into the Framework."

"Not all of us," Daisy whispered.

"The body can't exist without a conscious mind for an extended period of time," Simmons explained. "Not without extensive medical intervention. One of us was gone too long. Their body gave up. There's no place for the mind to return to in our world."

May could feel all of the eyes in the room turn to her, but their attention barely registered. She knew who it was before Simmons had stopped talking.

She had been in the Framework twice as long as the rest of them.

She was dead.


	4. Best Intentions

**Thanks for sticking with me, guys! Things get a little more twisty before they even-out, but this should give you some answers!**

* * *

 **The Framework, Seven Weeks Ago**

"Wha—what do you mean there's no place for her mind to return to?" Coulson sputtered.

At some point in the last minute, he had grabbed May's hand without meaning to. It was a reflex, muscle-memory from their imagined decade of wedded bliss. But he did not let go. Her fingers felt warm in his grip.

Alive.

Her mind was alive. Her body here was alive. But in the world they called "home," there was nothing but a corpse left as a repository for her thoughts.

"I've been monitoring everyone's vitals remotely through the 'backdoor' code I inserted in the Framework," Simmons explained. "That's how I found out about the Framework breaking away from our reality. May's heart flat-lined over two hours ago."

Coulson turned back to May.

Her face was blanched and devoid of expression.

"So, what?" He asked, looking at FitzSimmons. "We just leave her here? Is that what you're suggesting?"

"No, of course not," Fitz answered.

"That's the good news," Simmons replied brightly. "We've found a way to bring her back."

"How?" May asked.

The word sounded more like a croak than actual speech.

FitzSimmons exchanged a smile.

"Gravitonium," they answered together.

"'Gravitonium?'" Daisy echoed. "You mean that blob of silver goo that almost swallowed Malta?"

"What?" Mack asked. "What did you guys get up to before I came on board?"

"Nothing fun," Daisy assured him.

"Yes," Fitz said. "I've managed to synthesize my own sample of Gravitonium in the labs here. FitzCorp has been experimenting with it for year—well, weeks, I guess. Days? The point is, I've been studying it long enough that I know what is does.

"The Gravitonium that Dr. Hall created almost sucked in Malta because—

"It's an inter-dimensional portal!" Simmons interrupted.

"Like the one AIDA made?" May asked.

"Sort of," Fitz answered. "This is a little more… rudimentary."

"You're qualifying, Fitz," Coulson said. "What does that mean?"

"We think it works more like a wormhole, inside a black hole," Simmons said.

"You mean the thing that tears you apart atom-by-atom and theoretically reassembles you on the other side?" Mack asked dryly.

"What?" He said, at FitzSimmons aghast stares. "Didn't anyone else see _Event Horizon_?"

"So the only way for May to get back to our world is to shove her through some inter-dimensional portal that will 'theoretically' work like a black hole, and hope she gets reassembled on the other side in one piece?" Coulson summarized.

Fitz looked at the ceiling, apparently searching for any part of the question that seemed erroneous.

"Yeah, that just about sums it up," he agreed.

"Or, we could always try Plan B," Simmons said.

"What's that?" May asked.

"We could build a LMD of you in our world and transfer your memories into that," she suggested.

"No!" May and Coulson shouted in unison.

Simmons winced.

"Well, I did say it was 'Plan B.'"

Coulson took May by the hand and pulled her away from the others until they were out of earshot.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

He had no idea what she was feeling right now, but if she was half as scared as he was, he did not know how she was still standing. He felt like one false move and the floor would cave in under him.

"What's the alternative, Phil?" She asked.

There was an underlying current of desperation in her voice. Even though they both knew he would not have an answer, she still hoped he could give her one.

"I can't… live here," she said. "Not alone."

"What if I stayed too?" He asked.

It wasn't until he said it that he realized meant it. He could stay behind if it meant she was alive. What he could not do was return to a world she was not a part of.

May smiled sadly and the tears that filled her eyes threatened to spill over.

"You can't," she said. "I can't. Not knowing what we know. This world might be 'real,' but it's not ours. Being part of Hydra, fighting against the Inhumans…"

"Our marriage?" He finished for her.

"It's not who we are," she concluded.

Coulson nodded. She was right.

As soon as the memories from his real life came back, the house with the white-picket fence, the nine-to-five job, even his wife, felt like a dream. It was a beautiful dream. But it was not him. It was not them.

But there was one part that was not a fiction.

"I love you," he said.

May might be about to be torn to pieces and disappear from his life forever, and he would be damned if she was going to die thinking that all of this had been a sham.

"In this life and the other one, you are everything to me," Coulson said. "I need you to know that."

May's eyes spilled over and she covered his lips with her own.

It did not matter that the team was probably watching. This would hardly be the oddest thing that they experienced today.

"I do," she whispered, touching her forehead to his. "And I feel the same way. So if this is the only way we both get back, I'll do it."

Coulson wiped a tear from her cheek and frowned thoughtfully.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothing," he demurred. "It's just… we'll never know if…"

May nodded, understanding.

If Daisy had never shown up, they could have been parents.

They had only been trying a week. Now, they would never know if anything had come of it. Coulson hoped they had not been successful. He did not know much about babies, but he was relatively sure traveling through a wormhole would be on the list of things to avoid in early pregnancy.

"It would have been nice," May concluded.

"Yeah," Coulson whispered. "When we get back, we might need to have another conversation about that."

May smiled and kissed him one last time before they returned to the team.

They never had that conversation.

When he woke up in the submarine hours later, the only trace of his Framework life was a nagging feeling that there was something he had forgotten to do.

 **Our World, Present**

The mood in the Director's office was tense as the team stood in a semi-circle around the desk, eyeing the veiled box perched on top with varying degrees of suspicion and fear.

"Well, if no one else is going to say it, I am," Mack pipped up. "Why is this thing still here? Why haven't we destroyed it?"

"In case it's escaped your attention, Agent MacKenzie, things have been a little chaotic around here over the last couple of months," Mace answered. "Between repairing the base and chasing down the Watchdogs—

"Plus the mandatory post-Framework psychotherapy," Fitz murmured.

"We hadn't implemented a policy on what to do if the… object in question was ever retrieved," Mace continued. "And quite frankly, we didn't think it would happen this quickly."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Daisy snarked.

May stared down the box, ignoring the bickering around her, as if she looked at it hard enough, she could incinerate the damn thing by sheer force of will and spare all of them the trouble of deciding what to do with it. As much as she wanted this thing out of their lives for good, she knew they could not actually destroy it though. It was not the smart play.

"Well, I second Mack's concern," Fitz said.

"Me too," Simmons agreed. "Why draw this out any longer?"

"Wait, you guys don't want to poke around with it and see how it works?" Daisy asked.

"No," Simmons answered, shuddering in unison with Fitz.

"I'm officially out of the Cartesian dualism experimentation business," Fitz announced.

"I don't know what that means," Daisy said.

"No more messing with brains and fake bodies, or fake brains and real bodies," Fitz said. "Or any combination of the above."

"While your input is appreciated, this is not up for a vote," Mace broke in. "Has anyone seen Coulson?"

Everyone looked over at May, who stared back defiantly.

" _I'm_ not Coulson," she snapped. "And I don't know where he is."

"Sorry I'm late," came a voice from the door.

Coulson entered the room with pink cheeks and tousled hair. May felt his eyes linger on her for a fraction longer than anyone else, but if he was trying to communicate something, she did not acknowledge it. She knew where she stood with him. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

"Phil," Mace greeted. "We were just discussing what to do with our new friend here."

Coulson sized up the mood in the room with deliberate consideration. May could feel herself reflexively standing at attention. Whatever else he was to her, Coulson would always be the team leader. There were few people she had met who had the ability to command the focus of a group with his level of skill.

"I take it the majority want to destroy it, then?" He asked. He was met with nods and murmurs of agreement. May stayed still and silent, watching to see how the scene played out.

"So do I," Coulson said. "But we can't."

In spite the situation, May felt a smile tug at her lips. Coulson knew better than to bow to the knee-jerk reaction of revulsion and fear. There was a longer game in play here and this box was their ace-in-the-hole.

"There's more at stake here than just one man," Coulson said. "If we destroy the head in this box, the Superior, Anton Ivanov, dies. But there are hundreds of Watchdogs that follow his command. This is the mistake we made over and over when we faced Hydra.

"So this time, we're not going to just cut off one head. We're going to bring an end to the entire operation."

May heard nothing but the beat of her own heart as the team held their breaths, processing the implications.

"Alright, Coulson," Mack broke the silence. "What's your plan?"


	5. The Body

**A little more backstory before things escalate...**

* * *

 **Our World, Present**

Once the briefing was over, May made her escape as soon as she could leave the Director's Office without attracting any unwarranted attention. Too late, she realized that her exit had not gone unnoticed. The familiar clop of Coulson's gait followed her through the hallway. She closed her eyes as the steps picked up speed and he caught up with her.

"What did you think of the plan?" He asked.

"It's solid," she said, not breaking her stride. "If he takes the bait."

"May, do you have a second to talk?"

"Nothing to say," she replied.

"Then can you just listen?" He begged.

May pivoted on her heel and turned to face him so fast, Coulson almost got whiplash just watching her.

"What?" She snapped.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For?"

"Can we go somewhere private?" He asked. "Please?"

After a pause, she acquiesced with a curt nod and followed him to his quarters in the housing corridor.

She made sure to stand between him and the door in case she needed to make a quick getaway. Coulson sat on the corner of his bed a meter away from her. It was an effective tactic, one they were taught at The Academy. Placing yourself in a supplicating position below your opponent's eye-line was a sure-fire way to garner sympathy.

What Coulson did not realize was that her lack of sympathy was not the issue. It was his inability to understand the situation that had come between them.

"You're right," he started. "I didn't believe you were her when you came back."

May did not budge. This wasn't anything she did not already know.

"You know about the LMD that replaced you for two weeks before we were forced into the Framework," he continued. "But what you don't know is how it felt.

"I thought you were dead. I hoped you weren't, but I could not imagine there was any reason that they were keeping you alive. I was fooled by a robot. All the while, you could have been being tortured or killed. You have no idea how much I hated myself for that. And then, when I woke up, it was like a nightmare had come true."

"I know," May murmured. "I was there."

 **Our World, Seven Weeks Ago**

Stepping into the Gravitonium portal was the most terrifying event May had ever experienced. Pain did not come close to describing it. Pain was an old friend, something her body could understand. The wormhole made her felt like she was being blown apart and squeezed into the space of a single pinpoint all at once. If she could have begged for death, she would have. Instead, she just _existed_ in interminable terror and agony.

Then, it was over.

She was standing, drenched in sweat and shaking, in a darkened room somewhere in the basement of an off-site SHIELD facility. By the time she had finished vomiting, Daisy, Simmons and Yo-Yo were prying the vault door open and pulling her aboard a quinjet.

Daisy and Simmons had left for the "backdoor" shortly after May had consented to take the Gravitonium gateway back to their world. Using the descriptions provided by Mack, Mace, Coulson and Fitz, Daisy and Simmons awoke on the _Zephyr_ with Yo-Yo and pinpointed the submarine's exact location. May had followed them out of the Framework an hour later and was picked up on the way to rescue the others.

When _Zephyr One_ descended on the port where the submarine was docked, May only made a cursory protest to Daisy's insistence that she stay put while she, Simmons, and Yo-Yo went to retrieve their team. She would not have been of much help. May felt an unprecedented swell of empathy for Simmons and what she must have gone through after being on that planet for so long. Everything, even breathing, was disorienting.

Still, as the minutes ticked by, she started to grow anxious.

If this "Superior" was anything as formidable as Daisy claimed, they may have fallen into a trap. May groaned, reached for her ICER, and half-climbed, half-fell through the hatch in the submarine. She stumbled through the darkness, following the sounds of muted shouts and gasps.

The sight that greeted her when she caught up to her team made her knees buckle. She grabbed the doorframe for support and fought the reflex to gag.

One second, Yo-Yo was standing next to the haphazard scrap pile that had been AIDA. The next, she was right beside Mack, removing the headgear and straps that tied him to the Framework. From their restrained positions beside Mack, Fitz and Mace blinked in confusion at the scene in front of them.

In the middle of the room, May saw herself.

She watched as Coulson breathed into the mouth of her lifeless body and performed chest compressions, while Daisy and Simmons begged him to stop. May did not know how long he had been awake, trying to coax her body back to life. He was trembling and dripping with sweat, but refused to stop.

"Coulson, please," Daisy pleaded. "You've got to trust us. She's not gone!"

"I know," he yelled. "May! Wake up!"

Simmons stood back, wiping the tears from her face, and caught a glimpse of May struggling to stand in the doorway.

"May," she gasped.

Simmons grabbed Coulson's arm and forced him to look in her direction.

"Look, sir," she said. "See? She's here. She's not gone."

Far from being relieved, Coulson's face had crumbled when he finally paused resuscitation and saw her. That glance told her all she needed to know.

He did not remember.

She had lost him.

"No," he groaned. "No, no, nonono…"

Coulson buried his face in the chest of his dead partner. His muffled howl echoed through the metallic innards of the ship.

May could not watch anymore.

As she made her way back to the _Zephyr_ on leaden feet, she could still hear his pleas, begging the dead woman in his arms to come back.

* * *

It took two weeks for him to approach her. Two weeks of isolation, sympathetic glances from her colleagues, and mandatory therapy sessions. In those two weeks, Coulson had buried the body that she used to inhabit, apparently with full honors. For all she knew, he was the only one in attendance for her funeral.

She accepted his apology "for his behavior" and his offer of a "fresh start," but she knew they were a long way from being okay again. May did not want a fresh start. She wanted him to accept her for who she was. She wanted him to remember.

Work made her new lot in life a little easier.

Luckily for them, Anton Ivanov had not been on board the submarine when they raided it. Unfortunately, AIDA had constructed a nearly-indestructible body for him that was being controlled remotely by his brain, which was separate from the body entirely. May thought after almost thirty years of working for SHIELD, she could not be surprised anymore, but fate still had a twisted way of keeping things interesting.

The team was kept on their toes taking down Ivanov's Watchdogs. If nothing else, the work helped the days go by quicker.

Then, a little over a month after her return from the Framework, Simmons summoned May to the medical bay. She had spotted an anomaly in her blood-work. May was far from shocked. No one knew the side effects of traveling through a manufactured black hole. She had just been relieved that everything in her body seemed to be in the right place.

She had not been at all prepared for what Simmons had told her: she was pregnant.

After running a secondary test to confirm (then three more because May had insisted), Simmons stuck by her original diagnosis. It was not until May received a full DNA analysis of the fetus to assure that there were no developmental problems, that she accepted the news. She swore Simmons to secrecy on the condition that she would not take any unnecessary risks in the field.

May quickly discovered that was something easier promised than done.

If this had happened while she was still in the Framework, she would have been elated.

As it was, she was terrified.

She was going to be a mother and the man who was her child's father did not even remember their shared history. He did not even believe she was real.

 **Our World, Present**

"…told me you weren't a LMD, but I couldn't understand that at the time."

Coulson was still talking.

May blinked and tried to follow his words.

"May?" He asked.

She did not know what to say. As much as she wanted to empathize, it would take more than an apology to erase the hurt of the weeks past.

"You buried my body," she managed.

It was not a simple observation. It was an accusation. That gesture hurt more than she had let on. Logically, she understood the need to say goodbye, but she was not gone! It was like he had buried her that day, closing a chapter on a friendship that had spanned over two decades. He had let her go and she felt like a ghost, haunting his life with a reminder of what he had lost.

"I did," he agreed. "Maybe that was wrong, but it was something I needed to do. I told myself it wasn't you it was saying goodbye to. There was nothing in her body that was left of you, but it was still yours. It carried you for most of your life. It was marked with the scars of every bullet you took and every punch you landed in protection of your team. I thought that needed to be honored."

She had not thought about it like that.

Her Framework body was a blank canvas. It did not bare the marks from Bahrain or the callouses built up from years of training. It was hers, but it was unused. She never thought she would miss those old scars until now.

"I went to that grave today," Coulson told her.

May frowned.

"Why?"

He shrugged.

"I thought maybe I could find answers to all of the questions that I have been asking myself since I came back."

"And did you?" She asked.

"No," he replied. "I just remembered something I already knew: we've changed. All of us have changed since we first met. Sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's because of one horrible event, but we're not the same people we used to be.

"I died, May. And you stuck by me. You never once questioned if I was the same person I was before TAHITI. Even when I lost my mind, you were there, tethering me to the person I used to be. I am so sorry I didn't do the same for you. But, I want to, if you'll give me the chance."

He meant it. Every word. He might not remember everything, but he was willing to accept. It was the most she could ask for under the circumstances.

"Okay," she whispered.

"Okay?" He repeated.

May nodded.

When he stood up from the bed, May steeled herself in case he tried to touch her. She was not ready for that. Luckily, he seemed to know to keep his distance.

"Can you tell me what happened to you when you froze in the warehouse?" He asked.

Her eyes darted to the side.

Not yet. She could not tell him that yet.

"Was it because of something that happened in the Framework?"

"Yes," she admitted.

Coulson frowned.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me now," he assured her. "But I hope you will one day. I'm sorry I can't remember it."

There was nothing to say to that. She was sorry too.

"Protocol states that an agent has to be benched after an incident like that in the field until a shrink can sign off on your mental competence," Coulson stated. "But I'm leaving that up to you."

May arched an eyebrow.

"Come on, May," he said. "You were married to a shrink. You're already in mandatory therapy. You know your limits. So, what do you think? Are you okay to stay in the field?"

That was a loaded question.

Simmons certainly did not think so. If the young biochemist had her way, May would probably be on bedrest for the next seven months. Simmons was nothing if not overcautious. Still, she might have had a point on this one. Carrying an unborn child into a potential shoot-out was irrefutably reckless. It had already compromised her once.

"That depends," May demurred. "What did you have in mind?"

"I want you with me on this Watchdog op," he stated. "You're the only one I trust to have my back on this one. But you know the risks. It's going to be dangerous and if you think you're not up to it, I'll ask Daisy. I don't want you going into the field if you aren't ready. I don't want to…"

"To what?"

"To lose you again," he finished uneasily.

 _"Again."_

That, more than anything else, convinced her of his sincerity.

"I'll do it," she said.

"You're sure?"

"I'm in," she affirmed.

"Thanks, May."

Coulson did not seem to know what to do with his hands, so he shoved them in his pockets. May gave him a soft smile and pulled open the door behind her.

"See you tomorrow, Coulson."

As she left his room and headed for her bunk, May rested a hand on the small rise in her lower abdomen. If this mission did not prove to be a huge mistake, they were going to have to have another conversation again very soon. One that would be significantly more difficult.


	6. Trap

"Daisy, Mack, everyone in position?"

 _"We're ready and waiting for your signal, AC/DC,"_ Daisy replied over the com.

Coulson smirked and rolled his eyes toward May. Her attention did not waver from the road. White-knuckled fists gripped the steering wheel and her eyes darted from one side of the windshield to the other, scanning for potential threats.

Coulson frowned and turned off his com.

"Hey," he said, turning toward her. "You okay?"

"Fine," she replied. "Just want to get this over with."

He could not fault her for that.

There was no part of him that enjoyed riding in an armoured vehicle with the decapitated, yet fully-functional head of the man that wanted to kill him on the floor at his feet. If this plan worked though, the Watchdogs and Anton Ivanov would all be behind bars soon enough.

What they needed was a way to draw the Ivanov out and make him come to them. As Coulson explained to his team earlier in the Director's office, the head was the bait. Now all they needed was Ivanov's "superior" body to come and retrieve it. To make sure it could accomplish that, they had to provide a window of opportunity.

Daisy sent out a message to select members of SHIELD on the line that she and Simmons knew was being hacked by the Watchdogs. The notice informed SHIELD personnel that "an 084 of great value to the Watchdogs" was being transferred to an off-site facility. Daisy included a comprehensive description of the facility, complete with obvious flaws in security.

When Ivanov and his lackeys analysed the information, they would discern that the best time to retrieve the head would be at 6:30pm after the cargo was transferred. Upon raiding the facility, the Watchdogs would be met with the full force of SHIELD, the FBI, Homeland Security, and every other government agency that they had pissed off.

May and Coulson were overseeing transportation of the object from their base to the off-site storage unit.

Coulson turned his com back on and watched the buildings fly by. The streets were devoid of cars and pedestrian traffic by design. They had chosen a back-route that would take them away from civilians and had tasked the local police force with keeping their path clear.

"How much longer?" May asked.

"We're just about half a mile out," he replied. "So I would guess—

He broke off when a loud thunk from the roof of the van interrupted him.

May slammed on the breaks and a man clad in black tactical gear flew off the roof and landed on the asphalt in front of them.

"—about now," Coulson finished.

May cut her eyes over at him, wearing a shade of a grin. She hit the gas, swerving to miss their would-be assailant sprawled on the road.

"That won't be the last of them," May warned.

"Let's hope not," Coulson agreed.

He did not try to hide his smile. He was in his element and the pieces were falling into place.

"Guys, stay sharp," he said into the com. "They've taken the bait."

 _"We've got eyes on you, Coulson,"_ Mack said. _"Take this next left and—woah! Incoming!"_

Coulson saw it right before Mack spoke: a road-spike strip laid out right in the path of their vehicle. May did not even blink as she pulled the emergency brake and turned the wheel of the van, spinning them 180 degrees in the other direction.

When the smoke from the tires cleared, May and Coulson saw them. At least twenty Watchdogs armed to the teeth formed a wall across the street. They were trapped.

"What now?" May murmured through clenched teeth.

"Wait for it," Coulson assured her.

Sauntering up to the passenger's side of the armored car, like he was in a goddamned Western, came Anton Ivanov. Coulson tried not to flinch as the Russian grabbed his door by the handle and wrenched it out of its frame like it was a scrap of tin foil. May's hand went to her ICER and Ivanov grabbed Coulson by the shirt collar.

"You've taken something that belongs to me," he spat.

"If you don't surrender now, you're going to lose a lot more than just your head," Coulson retorted.

The man's face twisted into something resembling a smile.

"Always so sure of yourself, Phil Coulson," he growled. "That is your weakness. You thought you had the perfect strategy to trap me. You underestimated me. Again. You think that box just contains my mind? It's still alive, Coulson. And I could hear every word of your plan."

"Oh, I was counting on it," Coulson replied.

The smirk vanished from Ivanov's face and his grip on Coulson slackened perceptibly.

"Okay guys," Coulson said into his com. "You're on."

The scene in front of the armored van erupted into chaos.

Yo-Yo, Mack, Mace, Fitz, Simmons and May's tactical team came at the line of Watchdogs from either side. Coulson was awarded a clear view of the battle when Daisy leaped in front of the van and blew Ivanov back with a tectonic burst that nailed him to the pavement.

"Remember me?" Daisy asked him. "Things didn't go to well for you last time we met."

Ivanov snarled and struggled against the waves of energy that hammered at him.

"Go easy on him," Coulson warned Daisy. "Remember, we need him alive."

Sparing a glance at the street brawl between his team and the Watchdogs, Coulson decided the rest of them could use a reminder as well.

Yo-Yo was a blur, racing from one combatant to the next, disarming them and placing their weapons in the hands of her fellow agents. Mace, no longer enhanced with the Patriot serum, joined the tactical team in firing ICER bullets from the side-lines. FitzSimmons released a swarm of the latest model of D.W.A.R.F.s into the fray, modified with an array of non-lethal tranquilizing agents.

In spite of SHIELD's best efforts, the Watchdogs were holding their own. These were people recruited from some of the roughest gangs and prisons in the country. They were not going down without a fight.

Coulson watched as Mack slammed the butt of his shotgun-axe into the temple of his attacker, pumped a round into the magazine and took aim.

"Careful!" Coulson admonished his team over the coms. "The goal is to capture, not kill. This isn't all of them. We need them alive if we're going to question them."

A grunt, followed by the dull crunch of bone on steel, diverted his attention to May's side of the van. Coulson looked over to see her standing over the body of an unconscious Watchdog, who was sporting a nasty gash over his eye.

Coulson raised his eyebrows at her.

"What did I just say?"

"You said not to kill them," May replied. "He'll live."

He opened his mouth to retort when a gunshot exploded in his ear.

Coulson whirled around and watched Daisy sink to her knees onto the road. Blood blossomed from a bullet wound in her shoulder.

Ivanov got to his feet slowly, still training the smoking gun on the fallen agent.

"Sometimes the old ways are still the best," he taunted.

Coulson knelt facing Daisy, placing himself between her and Ivanov. His ICER was still clipped to his belt. There was no way he would be able to move fast enough to get off a shot before Ivanov put two bullets in them.

"Turn around, Phil Coulson," Ivanov instructed. "I want to see your face when I kill you."

Daisy shook her head and grabbed his hand, pleading with him. Coulson shot her a tight smile in reply and turned to face the man who had made it his life's mission to hunt him down.

"Despite what you may think, I don't actually take pleasure in killing," he said. "But this, I am truly going to enjoy.

Ivanov's face split into a grin, took aim at Coulson's chest, and fell backward as an ICER bullet hit him squarely in the forehead.

Daisy and Coulson looked up, slack-jawed, to see Melinda May still holding her weapon in front of her.

"If you want to kill someone, just do it," she muttered. "Try not talking about it so much."

Coulson let out a sign of relief and Daisy even managed a dry chuckle.

"You okay?" May asked Daisy.

She crouched alongside Coulson to get a better look at the wound in Daisy's shoulder.

"Bullet's still in there," Daisy gasped. "But I'll live."

"Alright," Coulson muttered.

He took off his jacket, balled it up and pressed it against her shoulder to staunch the flow of blood.

"We need to wrap this situation up," May said. "She needs medical attention."

"Guys…" Daisy started.

"Don't worry," Coulson assured her. "As soon as the Watchdogs realize we have their leader—

"No, Coulson, look!" Daisy said, pointing behind them.

May and Coulson turned around to see blank pavement where Ivanov had fallen. He was gone. May got to her feet and looked in the van.

"He took the head," she announced, slamming the door behind her.

"How the hell did the ICER wear off that fast?" Daisy asked.

"It doesn't matter," Coulson said, standing up. "If we let him escape now, we lose all of our leverage."

He cast a concerned look back in Daisy's direction.

"Go," Daisy told him.

Coulson nodded and ran off down the nearest side street.

"You'd better follow him," Daisy urged May. "I'll be fine."

May hesitated, avoiding Daisy's eyes.

"Hey," Daisy said. "You got this. Besides, you know one of us has to watch his back."

May rewarded her former protégé's pep talk with a tight-lipped smile. She squeezed the girl's uninjured shoulder and took off after her partner.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading, guys! This one was a bit short, so update will follow soon!**


	7. Calculated Risks

***Warning for violence. Not graphic, but possibly disturbing.***

* * *

Whatever AIDA had done to modify Anton Ivanov's artificial body, it was effective.

When May caught up to Coulson, he had cornered the Superior in a back-alley. May watched as Ivanov put the box containing his brain carefully to the side before attacking Coulson with an overhanded strike that he only barely managed to block. By the time she entered the fight, Coulson was on his knees from the effort of fending off Ivanov's successive blows.

May struck at Ivanov with a kick to the stomach. It was like hitting a brick wall with her foot. Ivanov let out a grunt and made a wild swipe at her head. As she leaned back to avoid the punch, Coulson used the distraction to land a jab to his gut with his prosthetic hand.

Ivanov stumbled back a few inches, but quickly recovered with an arrogant smirk.

May and Coulson exchanged a look.

The Superior was not going to go down easily.

They charged Ivanov from opposite sides. If they stayed on the periphery of his sight, he could not focus all of his attention on either one of them.

While Ivanov concentrated on dodging Coulson's fists, May struck him in the kidneys with a force that would have had most people screaming in pain. Ivanov merely moaned and twisted toward her with a backhanded slap that she had to duck to avoid. Coulson tried to use Ivanov's lack of balance to swipe his feet out from under him, but he remained rooted to the spot.

He turned his attention back to Coulson. Ivanov's first blow to Coulson's abdomen was blocked by his elbow, but the second hit him directly chest, sending Coulson tumbling across the alley into a brick wall.

"Phil!" May yelled.

The Russian turned to face May, obscuring her view of her fallen partner.

"I haven't forgotten about you, mishka," he snarled at her. "I remember what you did to me and my men all of those years ago."

May narrowed her eyes. Her knuckles cracked as her hands tightened into fists.

"Then you should remember what I do to people who attack Phil Coulson."

She held nothing back. For every swipe and lunge Ivanov made at her, May hit back with two kicks and a punch. Nothing seemed to shake him. He was slow and clumsy compared to her, but his skin seemed to be impenetrable. Two minutes in, her knuckles were bruised and one of her fingers was broken.

When she leaned back to avoid a wide feint to her left, Ivanov hooked her around her neck with his right arm, spinning her around and lifting her off her feet.

For the first time since the mission began, panic rose in her throat and almost choked her.

Acting on instinct, she bit down hard on the arm that pinned her against Ivanov's chest. He howled and his grip weakened. May slammed her head back into his nose and he dropped her to the concrete, where she fell to her hands and knees.

 _"Get up!"_ A voice inside of her screamed.

May lifted her head and saw Coulson sprawled on the ground.

His eyes were open, but he seemed to be having trouble focusing. He looked at her, then his eyes traveled to the object beside him.

Ivanov's head.

It was unguarded. If Coulson destroyed it, this would all be over.

He reached for the box.

Ivanov acted quickly. Before May could get to her feet, he kicked her squarely in the gut, knocking her to the ground.

May heard a howl echo through the alley that made her break out in a sweat. The guttural moan was so thick with despair and anguish that it ripped the air from her body. When Ivanov reached down and pulled her to her knees by her hair, the cries stopped. May realized the sound had come from her.

She could barely register what was happening.

Something cold and metallic was being pressed to her throat. Ivanov held her firmly by the roots of her hair, forcing her to face Coulson. May wrapped her arms around her waist, desperate to shield the child inside of her, even though she feared she was already too late.

"You won't destroy it, Phil Coulson," Ivanov was saying. "You went through all of this effort to deceive me, to catch my men unawares. We both know that the information I know is invaluable."

Coulson's eyes darted between May and the box. Through the fog in her brain, May realized something was wrong. She had never seen him like this.

He was afraid.

"You and I both know that you need me alive," Ivanov said. "And for that, you need the body and the mind. One without the other is useless to you. You can take me down and those thugs back there, but there are hundreds of us. Without the information in my head, you'll never take us all."

May swallowed and her eyes overflowed.

In the past, she accepted death as an inevitability in her line of work. One day, she would be a fraction too slow or duck too late, and there would be no magical portal to bring her back. She did not mind dying for a good cause.

But that was before she became a mother.

If there was a chance in hell that her baby was still alive, she could not die. Not now.

Coulson caught her eye and his fear seemed to disappear. His mouth became a hard line as he looked up at the Superior.

"You won't destroy it, Coulson," Ivanov repeated. "Not even to save this little bitch."

Coulson smiled at him.

"You've spent your entire life learning everything there is to know about me," he said. "And you still have no idea who I am."

He leveled his gun at the box.

"Dosvedanya tovarisch."

The box exploded into shards and viscera as the bullet from his gun shredded the brain that controlled the monster.

The pressure on May's scalp abated and the knife fell from her throat. She felt the ground tremor as the Superior crumpled behind her. She doubled over, feeling the cold, wet concrete against her forehead.

"May?"

She closed her eyes. Coulson's voice sounded far away.

In spite of everything that had happened over the last two months, she never once wished to be back in the Framework that had held her prison before this moment. Now, she hoped that _this_ was the fantasy. That there was a way to make this all fade away.

He hand rested on her back. It was warm and heavy, anchoring her to the present.

"Melinda, please look at me."

She picked her head off the pavement and looked up into Coulson's eyes.

"What did he do to you?" He asked.

He did not understand. His tough-as-nails partner had been reduced to a trembling wreck by a blow that should have just made her angrier than hell.

"Phil, I—I need to go to the hospital," she told him.

"Okay," he hedged. "Did he break something?"

The Melinda May he knew did not seek out medical attention unless she was at death's door.

"Please don't ask. Not now," she muttered. "Just get me to a doctor."

"Alright," he said.

Coulson lifted her to her feet and they stumbled out of the alley together.

* * *

 ***"Dosvedanya tovarisch" = "Goodbye comrade"**


	8. Pieces

Daisy's weary glare toward the knock at her hospital room door transformed into relief when Coulson peered around the corner and let himself in.

"Finally!" She exclaimed.

She turned off the television bolted to the opposite wall and threw the remote control in the closest chair.

"You here to bust me out of here?" Daisy asked. "There's _nothing_ on television except for reruns of _The View_."

Coulson replied with a wan smile.

"Not yet," he answered. "You've lost a lot of blood. I think they want to keep you overnight for observation."

He removed the discarded remote from the chair, pulled it up to the bed, and sat down.

"So why am I not 'being observed' at the base?" Daisy pressed. "Why bring me to a hospital?"

It was a good question. One that he did not really know the answer to.

"May was injured in the fight with the Superior," he began.

"Is she okay? Was she shot?" Daisy asked.

"No. I don't know," Coulson equivocated. "I think she's fine. She just thought that she needed to see a doctor at a hospital instead of the base. And since we were already heading in that direction, it made sense for them to patch you up here as well."

"That doesn't sound like May," Daisy observed.

No. It did not.

But they would get to that.

"Ivanov's dead, Daisy," he confessed. "Body and mind. The box with his brain was destroyed in the fight."

Daisy exhaled audibly and collapsed into the pillows behind her.

"Well," she said, looking at the ceiling. "I can't say I'm sorry about that. Still, that is going to mean more work for us."

"All of his followers that we didn't apprehend today will scatter back to the shadows," Coulson agreed.

"They'll have to get funding," Daisy pointed out, picking up her head to look at him. "And maybe we'll be able to wring some intel out of the ones we caught."

"I wanted to end this," Coulson said. "I wanted the Watchdogs to be stopped. Now they'll reorganize and be even harder to catch."

"Coulson," Daisy said.

She put a hand on his arm.

"You guys must have had a good reason for destroying that box."

Coulson closed his eyes, shutting out her consolations.

He was back in the alley. He heard May scream. He had never heard anything like that before. Certainly not from her. He saw the fear and pain in her eyes when Ivanov held that knife at her throat.

He would do it again.

He would have shot that box again and again, given the chance.

"Coulson. Hey, Coulson!" Daisy tried to catch his attention. "You okay?"

He looked down at his hands and saw that he had twisted and balled up the bed sheets in his fists.

"Sorry," he said, releasing his grip.

"What happened with you guys?" Daisy muttered.

"I don't know," he said. "Daisy, have you noticed anything different about May since she came back from the Framework?"

"She's not an LMD, Phil," she replied sardonically.

"That's not what I mean," Coulson said. "Things were rough between us for a while, you know that. I couldn't understand what had happened when we returned. I pushed her away. But now… she's holding something back."

He tried not to notice the Daisy's pitying frown as he ploughed ahead.

"I know that she experienced a whole life in the Framework," he conceded. "That had to change her in some way. But you and Simmons remember everything that happened too and you're both fine."

Daisy sighed.

"Well yeah, but we knew who we really were," she explained. "We knew that the Framework wasn't real and we spent most of our time trying to get everyone else out. I didn't even meet up with you and May until the last day we were there. And trust me, you two were a piece of cake to convince after Mack. Not to mention having to deal with Ward—

"Ward?" Coulson exclaimed.

"I know, right?"

"Okay, putting a pin in that for a minute," he said. "When you met up with us, was May okay? Was she happy?"

Daisy shrugged.

"It's May, Coulson. She's not exactly an open book, no matter what universe she is in," Daisy said. "The only time I saw her, I had to tell her that her life an illusion created by a demonic book, and that a power-crazy scientist that had replaced her body with a robot. So no, she wasn't sunshine and rainbows when we met."

Coulson nodded, staring blindly at the wrinkled bed sheets in front of him.

"But," Daisy continued hesitantly. "I think you were _both_ happy in general. With each other."

He blinked.

"What do you mean?"

"Look, I know it's none of my business," Daisy said. "But I also know what I saw in there. Your marriage might have been something concocted by the Framework, but you two loved each other. You can't fake that. I get that it might be a little awkward being back in 'the real world' having experienced all of that, but what's stopping you guys from being happy together again?"

Coulson could not be certain, but he was pretty sure his jaw actually hit the floor. After the words, "your marriage," he had more or less tuned Daisy out.

"M-may and I were married?" He croaked.

Daisy's eyes grew round and spots of pink appeared on her cheeks.

"She didn't tell you?" She asked. "She didn't tell you… Coulson, I'm so sorry. I thought you knew."

* * *

The pieces of a puzzle he did not even realize needed solving were starting to fall into place. All of the events of the last few weeks were cast in a new light and were now making too much sense. May's distance, her anger, her inability to look him in the eye, he chalked it all up to his own inability to reconcile himself with her "death" and resurrection. But it was only part of a whole story. One he could not remember.

Daisy said they were happy.

How long had they believed they were married?

Simmons told him that time passed differently in the Framework. What had actually been two weeks in their world could have been months or even years in the Darkhold dimension.

Coulson considered himself lucky that he could not remember the Framework. He had caught snatches of conversation from the others and none of it sounded like a world he wanted any part of. Hydra had taken over SHIELD, Inhumans were hunted down and put into stasis without a trial.

What kind of person would he have been in that world? Would he have fought against the tide of injustice, or would he have floated with it, a product of his own paranoid environment?

In all honesty, he did not want to know.

Whatever his flaws were in that place, there had been something good in him. Something good enough to make Melinda May want to marry him.

Their history in the Framework might have explained her behavior towards him, but there was still a piece missing. Coulson still did not understand what had happened in the alleyway with Ivanov and why she had insisted on coming to the hospital for a relatively minor injury.

He leaned back in the hard plastic chair of the waiting room and bit the inside of his cheek. The first inklings of a hunch had begun to take root in his mind and he hoped to the gods he was wrong. Because if he was correct, then that would mean—

" _It's impossible,"_ he chastised himself.

But he had witnessed the impossible on a regular enough basis not to dismiss it out-of-hand.

"Mr. Phil Coulson?"

He tripped to his feet and met the nurse at the door of the waiting room. His mouth was dry and he could not formulate an appropriate response.

"You're listed as Ms. May's emergency contact," she observed, looking at her clipboard. "You're her partner?"

He answered without thinking.

"Yes."

The woman took him by the arm and led him into the hallway.

"Melinda is fine," she assured him. "And so is the baby."

Coulson grabbed the wall behind him with a sweat-slicked palm as the ground fell out from under him.

"…bruising and knows to contact us if there is any cramping or bleeding," the nurse continued. "But from what we can tell, both mother and child are healthy. Mr. Coulson? Are you okay?"

He managed a noise that must have sounded like something affirmative.

The nurse smiled patronizingly and patted his arm.

"They must have given you quite a scare," she soothed. "You can see her now. She's in the fourth exam room on the right."

The hallway spun around him as the nurse walked away. It took every ounce of his concentration to place one foot in front of the other to make it to the door of May's examination room.

A full three minutes later, he finally raised his hand to the door to knock.

He hoped May would feel like talking to him, because for the first time in his life, he had no idea where to start.

* * *

 **One more chapter (and epilogue) left! Thanks for your lovely comments, guys!**


	9. The Life You Don't Remember

May tossed the paper examination gown in the garbage and threw on her dirty uniform as fast as she could, wincing as the button of her pants pressed into her bruised abdomen. She unfastened the clasp and probed the bump in her middle delicately.

"You're still here," she murmured. "It's going to be okay. I'll do better. I promise."

She sank down into a chair that had been propped against the wall and put her head in her hands.

May could not remember the last time she felt like such a spectacular failure.

She had botched the mission. The Superior was dead because she could not hold it together. She should not have even been in the field in the first place. She almost lost her child because she could never say "no" to Coulson when he said he needed her watching his six.

Coulson.

What the hell was she going to say to him?

He deserved some kind of explanation for her colossal fuck-up. There was nothing she could tell him that was going to make her actions make sense.

May was still bent over in the chair, trying to convince herself to get up, when someone knocked on the door.

"Come in," she said, sitting up straight.

"Hey," Coulson greeted her softly.

In the time it took for him to turn around to close the door, May had her game-face back on.

"Sorry it took so long," she said. "I'm just waiting for the release papers, then they'll let me go. How's Daisy?"

Coulson blinked.

"Oh, um, she's fine," he stuttered. "Anxious to get out of here, but the doctors want her to stay the night."

May nodded. She got to her feet and walked to the exam table to grab her jacket.

"The nurse said you, uh, you checked out okay," Coulson said.

"Yeah," she agreed, her back to him. "Just a broken finger and some bruising."

"She said your baby was fine too."

May's heart stopped for a second, then seemed to beat twice as fast to make up for the interruption. She took her time pulling on her jacket.

"I guess doctor-patient confidentiality doesn't extend to R.N.'s," she muttered.

"There was a misunderstanding," Coulson said. "I said I was your partner and she thought I was…"

May turned around and met his eyes, silently daring him to continue.

"But she's not wrong, is she?" He asked.

This is not how May wanted him to find out. True, she had yet to determine when and what she was going to say to him, but it would not have been like this. Not from a stranger in a hospital after she had just been attacked.

To her credit, May did not waver or hesitate. Bad timing aside, she had nothing to be ashamed of.

"No," she replied evenly. "She's not wrong."

She watched as the color drained from his complexion at her confirmation.

"Daisy said we were married in the Framework."

He spoke so quietly, May could barely make out the words. She did not know if she was even meant to hear them, or if he was just thinking out loud, trying to make himself believe what he already knew to be true.

"This is—this is why you froze that day in the warehouse, wasn't it?" He realized. "You weren't afraid for yourself. You were afraid for the baby."

May nodded imperceptibly, feeling the heat rise to her face.

"May," he exhaled. "What the hell were you thinking, going into the field today?"

"I was thinking you needed me to watch your ass," she shot back. "And I was right."

"You should have told me," he said.

He probably did not mean it as an admonition. May could only guess what he had been imagining since he found out the truth. But she did not care.

The weight of this secret had been pressing against her for weeks. Not a day had passed that she did not question if she was doing the right thing by keeping it to herself. She had her reasons. She could deal with the hounding of her own conscience, but could not take it from him.

"No, I shouldn't have," she replied.

"I could have helped you!"

"How?" she demanded. "You were so damn preoccupied with trying to come to terms with the fact that I am the person I used to be, how could you have possibly understood, let alone helped me?"

There was nothing he could say to that. It was true.

"Did you ever stop to ask yourself what I lost?" She asked. "I am Melinda May. I am every single part that makes me who I am. I have every memory from both lives. You are the one who forgot."

The silence that hung between them was as loud as a gunshot.

Coulson nodded and stared at the floor.

In her mind's eye, he looked every bit the man he had when they stood in their kitchen in the Framework, trying to convince her of a truth she was afraid to admit.

She had hurt him and it was not fair. It was not his fault that he did not know what she had been through. It was not his fault that he did not remember.

But she was still angry.

"Then, please, help me remember," he said.

May smiled sadly and leaned against the exam table.

"I can't, Phil," she answered. "I have ten years' worth of memories that happened between us. I could tell you things that happened, things we said or did, but nothing I say is going to make you remember how it felt."

May crossed her arms and shook her head at herself, avoiding the grief in his eyes.

"I thought this was all a selfish impulse," May sighed.

"What was?" He asked.

"This," she replied, gesturing to her stomach. "Wanting to have a baby. I would have never believed that I could have brought a child into the world if it wasn't for you. But you convinced me that it was okay, and I wanted to believe you were right.

"That's why I didn't tell you, Phil. Because the person who would do that for me, just to make me happy? He's gone."

Coulson shook his head and crossed space between them. He brought his hand to rest on her arm.

"I'm not gone, May," he said firmly. "I don't remember this happening, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy that it did."

He gave her arm a tight squeeze. Everything inside her that told her to stand her ground was not enough to stop her from leaning into his touch.

"The Framework didn't make us who we are," he continued. "There was nothing in that place that we did not bring in ourselves. It was a product of our thoughts and feelings.

"So you have to know whatever world we are in, you are everything to me. I need you to know that."

May's lips parted in disbelief. She searched his face for any indication that he knew that he had said these words before, but there was nothing.

It was just his truth, as real now as it was in the place that he could not remember.

"I might not be the person you knew in the Framework," he continued. "But I can make you happy here."

"Both of you," he added, glancing at her abdomen.

She closed her eyes and exhaled.

"Please, May," he implored. "Please let me try."

Taking a blind step forward, she rested her head on his chest, settling in the spot where she used to fit right under his chin. He embraced her carefully, as if one wrong move when send her running from the room. When she wrapped her arms around him, he abandoned caution and pulled her against him so tightly she could barely breathe.

She did not care.

Everything about him was just as she remembered: the weight of his arms, the steady beat of his heart, the warmth of his touch.

As cliché as it sounded, he felt like home.

She mumbled something that was muffled by the fabric of his shirt.

"What was that?" He asked, pulling away in inch.

"We met in Boston in the middle of a blizzard," she said.

Coulson smiled.

That day that Daisy had come to their house and told them the truth about their lives, May knew she could never go back. She thought that whatever happened from that point on, she would be stuck between two universes.

Maybe she had not given herself, or Phil, enough credit.

Even though she had the memories of two lives in her head, she was not irretrievably doomed to be trapped in a prison between them. Just because she could not go back, did not mean she could not move forward. She just needed to find the strength to try.

"Lola was buried under four feet of snow and I gave you a ride home," she said, pulling back further to look at him.

"That's very chivalrous of you," Coulson remarked. "So, I had Lola, huh? Was I a spy there as well?"

May's mouth twitched.

"No, you were a teacher."

"Yeah? What did I teach?"

He opened the door of the exam room and they walked out together, hand-in-hand, her fingers locked between his.

May paused.

"What is it?" He asked.

"That's strange," May answered. "I don't remember."

* * *

 **Thanks so much for reading, you guys. I appreciate all of your comments and favs. This one was really fun to write! (Good way to pass the time before the show comes back next week.)**

 **Epilogue still to come!**


	10. Epilogue

**Epilogue: Two Years Later...**

* * *

It had sounded ridiculous to him at the time.

Phil Coulson had and always would be an Agent of SHIELD. The thought of having any other career had never appealed to him. Despite what he said to May about there not being anything in the Framework that was not a product of their own minds, in this case, there must have been a glitch.

But once May told him that he had been a teacher in their other life, the idea rooted itself in his brain and stayed there, irritating him like an itch that he could not scratch.

As much as the career-spy in him was loathe to admit it, there was something appealing about the idea of teaching _something_. Maybe history, like his dad.

After all, SHIELD had initially recruited him because he saw patterns in historical data that hinted at a whole world beyond what was recorded in the textbooks. Now, most of that larger world, including aliens, superheroes, and SHIELD itself, was a matter of public knowledge. He could use his own experiences to educate a new generation that was struggling to grasp the ramifications of the reality that had only recently come to light.

The day Margaret May Coulson was born was the day those idle thoughts became more than a possibility.

His hands would not stop shaking the first time he held his daughter. Her blue, teary eyes looked up at him and Coulson realized that he had never experienced true fear until that moment. For the first time in his life, there was someone who relied on him completely, someone who needed him to come home safe at the end of the day.

He could think of worse ways to make sure that happened than to educate people using what he had learned during his time as an agent.

While predictably disappointed, no one was particularly surprised when he handed in his two weeks' notice and stepped down as the de facto head of SHIELD. Within a month, he and May had moved their small family to a house off-base.

Which is how, two years after the fatal run-in with the Superior, Phil Coulson found himself standing in front of a packed lecture hall at the local community college. On the chalkboard behind him, he had scrawled the title of the day's lecture, "Inhumans: Deconstructing the Myth."

"So as you can see from the reading," he said. "Contrary to recent political rhetoric that would have you believe that Inhumans are a recent phenomenon, their history dates back thousands of years. They have been a part of our global community since before most human civilizations began."

A student in the third row of the lecture hall raised her hand.

"Yes, Calle?"

Phil Coulson leaned against the desk at the front of the classroom and waited for the girl to speak.

"Why do people fear Inhumans so much then, if they've always been here?" Calle asked.

He smiled.

"What do you guys think?"

Several students pipped up in response. Coulson stood back and listened, content to let them debate among themselves. After a few minutes, a familiar prickling sensation diverted his attention from the discussion.

He was being watched, and not just by his class.

Looking over at the narrow window in the classroom door, he saw Melinda May staring back at him from the hallway. A tight smile concealed her impatience as she adjusted the toddler on her hip.

Coulson turned back to his students.

"It's true that people often fear what they don't understand," he said. "When the Terrigen crystals were first released into the environment, there was a lot of panic. This led to misinformation being spread, making the panic worse. Luckily, the study of Kree artifacts has increased our awareness of the origin of the Inhumans and helped us to understand them a little better.

"So for tonight, please read the declassified SHIELD report on the Gloucestershire Monolith and we will discuss it when I will see you on Wednesday."

May maneuvered past the hoard of undergraduates as they filed out of the door.

One of the students took a glance at May, then back at Coulson.

"Is this your wife, Mr. C?"

"Derek," Coulson acknowledged. "This is my partner, Melinda,"

"Nice to meet you," Derek nodded at her.

When Derek walked away, he shot a thumbs up in Coulson's direction with a mouthed "Nice!"

Coulson refrained from rolling his eyes as he turned towards May.

"Hey ladies!" He greeted her and his daughter.

The child in May's arms squirmed and reached out to him. Coulson pulled her from May's grasp and kissed her on the cheek.

"Hey there, Maggie May!"

The girl replied with a series of gurgles that Coulson took to mean she was happy to see him.

"I thought it was your day off?" He asked May.

After her maternity leave was over, May had taken a "soft retirement" from her job as a specialist. Technically, she was only supposed to be working at SHIELD on a consulting basis now, but the only thing that seemed to have changed was having the option to ignore her phone if she did not feel like coming in. Coulson suspected she would have complained more if she did not love it. There was something immensely satisfying about knowing you were impossible to replace.

"It was," she sighed. "I just got a call from Daisy. They've found them. The team is ready to move in."

"The last Watchdog cell?" He asked. "She's sure this time?"

May nodded.

"This is it, Phil," she affirmed. "It's a heavily fortified compound, but we've got the element of surprise. They have no idea we're coming."

"Okay," he said, bouncing his daughter on his hip. "So I guess it's just you and me tonight, huh, Mags?"

The girl cooed and smacked him lightly in the face with a wet palm. Coulson snorted, but May shook her head.

"FitzSimmons are staying on base," she said. "All of the tech is locked and loaded. They said they would watch Maggie for us."

"Us?" He repeated, looking up. "You know I'm retired, right?"

"Sure," May replied. "You were retired a year ago when Loki and Oden showed up in New York, too."

"Well, yeah, but you couldn't really expected me to sit out—

"And that incident in Wakanda two months ago?" She goaded.

"May, Cap was there!" Coulson insisted. "Steve Rogers needed _my_ help. You know I couldn't pass that up."

May smirked and grabbed his hand, leading him out of the classroom to the parking deck. When they got to the SHIELD-issued SUV, Coulson buckled Maggie into her car seat and joined his partner in the front.

"You really want me on this one?" Coulson asked, as he secured his own seat-belt.

"You were there when we started this, Phil," May replied. She turned the ignition and gunned the vehicle to life. "I thought you'd want to be there when we finished. Besides, you're the only one I trust to have my back."

Coulson cast a sidelong glance at her.

"If I had known what a guilt-trip that line was, I wouldn't have used it on you so much back in the day," he said.

May grinned.

"Yeah, you would have."

"Yeah, I would have," he agreed.

Coulson turned around and checked on their daughter. Maggie had her eyes closed, already rocked to sleep by the steady motion of the car.

"Hey," May said softly. "She'll be safe at the base. I would not have asked you to come otherwise."

"Alright," Coulson sighed. "I guess I can dust off the old ICER. But only because you need me to watch your back."

"Won't need much dusting, since you sleep with it under your pillow," she retorted.

She was right about that.

Spies never really retired. The missions just got a little further apart and they found new ways to distract themselves between them.

At least that was what he used to think.

Between May, Maggie, and his teaching career, his new life was more than just a distraction from his intermittent jobs with SHIELD. It was the best of both worlds.

"What is it?" May asked, after a few minutes had passed in silence.

"What?"

"You're staring at me."

Coulson was quiet for a minute longer before replying.

"I was just thinking. Daisy told me that when we were in the Framework, you were happy. We were together, you were a spy, I was a teacher… was it like this? Was it like our life is now?"

May scoffed.

"Not even close."

Not taking her eyes from the road, her hand found his. Coulson watched her press their entwined fingers to her lips for a brief moment before resting their hands on the center console.

"This is much better."

* * *

 **Thank you for sticking with me on this one!**

 **I loved reading your comments.**

 **Just one more week until we dive into the Framework. I'm sure it will pan out _exactly_ like this... Lol!**


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